Coronavirus: what Canadians need to know

Aristotleded24 wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

While this is a Scottish public service announcement I think it is germane to a discussion about what Canadians need to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsiXbrH_vUA&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2GI...

*Yawn* just baseless fear tactics among the Iraq-WMD lies from people who believe they have a right to control other people's behaviour just because they are scared, and who seem to believe that just because they feel bad about something the world has to change to appease them. Responsible adults deal with their own feelings without trying to control other people.

The decisions are not being made by people in general nor by health officials. The decisions are being made by elected politicians. I would rather have health officials making the decisions but by law politicians are doing it. 

There is absolutely no need to look beyond your local hospital. If the nurses and doctors are saying they are close to capacity there are few choices. 

1) Do nothing until the hospital can no longer cope and must cancel surgeries. 

2) Do nothing permanently and order in the refrigerator trucks for people dying from Covid and from normally non-fatal conditions like strokes, heart attacks and giving birth. 

3) Use limited restrictions to keep cases at a pace the hospitals can cope with.

4) Do more vigorous shut downs, almost Wuhan style, then jump on hot spots. 

In Canada various provinces and communities made a wide variety of choices. There has been no one variety fits all. The majority of Canadians agree with varying levels of restrictions.

Iraq WMDs were a made up excuse to invade Iraq. They didn't exist. Covid-19 exists and has killed almost 60 million people worldwide. 

Aristotled, you are the definition of a partisan conspiracy theorist. Literally. No exageration. Your devotion is to libertarianism and you will believe anything that supports it regardless of evidence. 

There will be 50 scientists saying one thing and 2 scientists saying another, but you will use the 1 as "proof" that the 49 are wrong. In rare cases it is true that the 1 can be right but not yet accepted by the established powers that be. 

This is not one of those rare cases. We have proof from the community level to the global level. Throughout the entire world there is not one single example of what you promote including Sweden. 

You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts. Covid-19 is a factual reality. Hospitals being unable to keep up is a factual reality. Nurses are not hiding in the back room slacking off. They are not exagerating. There is no need to reference a single number to understand that.

If we open up more the hospitals will not be able to bear the strain. We are not even at the end of November yet. We are not being too strict we are being too lax. January and February are typically peak season for the flu. This year the flu is already down 98%. Covid-19 is not. The numbers are going up. January, February and March are going to be devastating on multiple levels.

This has been done in the name of keeping the economy going, not in the name of freedom. Ironically this approach will be worse for business. If we had done really strict regional lockdowns from the beginning all of Canada could be a bubble by now. Montreal should have been in soft quarantine from the rest of the province. Perhaps Quebec City too. This could have been shut down in a matter of months with the exception of hot spots. 

Even now, the responsible thing would be to go into a well-planned 2 month shut down including soft curfews and limited travel between regions. Massively ramp-up testing and tracing so that resources can be sent to hot spots and everyone else can carry on. 

Politicians almost without exception get a big fat FAIL on pandemic management and so does the WHO. 

Pondering wrote:

Do nothing permanently and order in the refrigerator trucks for people dying from Covid and from normally non-fatal conditions like strokes, heart attacks and giving birth.

Refrigerator trucks? I know that was an issue in New York. Has that happened anywhere else? Can you cite any actual news articles that say as much?

Pondering wrote:

The majority of Canadians agree with varying levels of restrictions.

Why should I consult with the majority before I decide what I think or how I feel about something? The majority of people would have also supported swift police actions to end the rail blockades earlier this year. I guess by that logic it is wrong for me to support the blockades?

Pondering wrote:

Covid-19 exists and has killed almost 60 million people worldwide.

It has infected close to 60 million people worldwide. Close to 1.4 million have died. That information is easliy available on Worldometers.

Pondering wrote:

Aristotled, you are the definition of a partisan conspiracy theorist. Literally.

I have posted facts and context about the covid pandemic. If all you can do is call me names and repeat angry social media memes, that says a great deal about your argument.

Pondering wrote:

Your devotion is to libertarianism and you will believe anything that supports it regardless of evidence.

Libertarian. Anarchist. Socialist. Capitalist Communist. Progressive. Fascist. Progressive. Regressive. Right-wing. Left-wing. I'm beginning to think that each one of these labels is functionally meaningless, and is used primarily as a means of in-group/out-group signaling. "I wear this label, I'm good!" "You wear that label, you're bad." I'm not sure I want to define myself by any label. Instead, I will look at the data and form whatever opinions the data lead me to conclude. If someone else wants to stick a label on me, that's up to them.

Pondering wrote:

You are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts. Covid-19 is a factual reality. Hospitals being unable to keep up is a factual reality.

Let's take a look at actual hospitalization data from Ontario and Quebec as of November 28. For Ontario we have:

November 19: 526 hospitalizations (146 in ICU)

November 28: 595 hospitalizations (155 in ICU)

Not the greatest trend I'll admit. It is still well short of the hights in the spring. ICU numbers peaked on April 4 at 264 cases. The total number of hospitals peaked on May 14 at 1026. So somehow things were managed.

Onto Quebec:

November 21: 642 hospitalizations, 103 in ICU

November 27: 678 cases, 93 in ICU.

Hospitalizations up slightly, but the load on the ICU is less. These 2 provinces had the most comprehensive hospitalization data available.

Pondering wrote:

If we open up more the hospitals will not be able to bear the strain. We are not even at the end of November yet. We are not being too strict we are being too lax. January and February are typically peak season for the flu. This year the flu is already down 98%. Covid-19 is not. The numbers are going up. January, February and March are going to be devastating on multiple levels.

If these restrictions in Winnipeg last much longer, then I think we could be in for a rough ride for the next year at least. Limiting the capacity of people to gather inside during the coming months puts them at risk of freezing to death. I also believe that the coming winter of discontent will cause enormous social strain that has the potential to break out in exactly the kind of civil unrest we saw in Minneapolis earlier this year. Winnipeg has already had a problem with violent crime escalating in recent years. The complicating factor of meth use isn't helping matters, and I expect that to be an even greater problem. That would put strain on our EMS response. We could also see violent flare-ups also overwhelming our hospitals as well. My message to hospital employees who want to restrict freedom because they feel overwhelmed right now? Dealing with the fall-out from the pandemic response measures is not going to be fun for you in the next little bit.

NDPP wrote:

True enough, safety first.

ps thnx also for great guffaw at the notion of the imperialist gangsters of the EU as principled precautionary practitioners. Someone should take them to court. Alas, there too the criminals control the process. These are revolutionary times Covid or no covid. Ready or not.

The response to covid turned me off the idea of revolutions of any kind. Since covid came on the scene, everyone seems to want to exploit the crisis to impose their utopian vision of society. Unfortunately, no matter what utopian vision you come up with, some peopel will disagree with that vision. Very often when revolutionaries sieze power, anyone who disagrees with their utopian vision is left behind and simply discarded. History has many examples to prove this.

eastnoireast wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

NDPP wrote:

True enough, safety first.

ps thnx also for great guffaw at the notion of the imperialist gangsters of the EU as principled precautionary practitioners. Someone should take them to court. Alas, there too the criminals control the process. These are revolutionary times Covid or no covid. Ready or not.

The response to covid turned me off the idea of revolutions of any kind. Since covid came on the scene, everyone seems to want to exploit the crisis to impose their utopian vision of society. Unfortunately, no matter what utopian vision you come up with, some peopel will disagree with that vision. Very often when revolutionaries sieze power, anyone who disagrees with their utopian vision is left behind and simply discarded. History has many examples to prove this.

yeah, i was surprised to find pp in the eu governance.  that's not where i became familiar with it...

i think covid has shown that there is a deep lack of and aversion to honest analysis (honest = i might be wrong, even if i think i'm not), and a whole lotta' rally 'round the strongman i'm scared.  and analysis is fundamental to opposing power, let alone running things differently.

 

I think the core issue at stake here is that people, especially in Western society, have difficulty with the idea that there are some things in life that are simply beyond human control. That's the one question we never seem to ask ourselves about covid. Many independent experts and scientists have suggested this. If, however, any of the Chief Medical Officers of Health said to their respective ministers of health, "I'm sorry, but the truth is there is very little we can do in order to stop this virus," the health minister would simply find someone else to find a way to "control" this thing.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Many approaches to mitigation have been tried in many different places, and the outcomes have been so different that much thought has been spent on trying to discover the operative differences.

Nearly every approach to mitigation we have taken has failed. We tried locking down, however when Belgium and Peru did that, they lost more people as a percentage of their populations to covid than almost anywhere else in the world. Testing and tracing has failed, as many cases cannot be traced back to a single source, and people will often refuse to co-operate with tracers. Winnipeg has been under as close to a universal mask mandate in every sense that matters since September 28, and cases here have skyrocketed. The largest covid wave and the largest death wave here in Manitoba happened in November, when social distancing restrictions were at their most limiting. Furthermore, fatal outbreaks of covid in nursing homes have happened througout this country since the start of the pandemic regardless of the state of lockdown or how open the economy was.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Far from having no effect, the different approaches have had wildly varying results, ranging from nearly complete failure (USA, Brazil) to almost complete success (New Zealand, South Korea).

You  mean how New Zealand was so successful stopping covid that it had to go into a second lockdown, which resulted in lockdown protests? You mean how South Korea was so successful stopping the coronavirus that it is now in its third wave? You mention the United States? You do understand that many different approaches were taken in different regions of the country? Are you referring to how states led by Republican governers failed by generally losing smaller proportions of their population to covid than states led by Democrats, even though Democrats were generally stricter about closing things down?

Michael Moriarity wrote:

If this were truly "beyond human control", then all countries would have seen the same results, namely total failure to control the pandemic. It is hard to see how you can refuse to acknowledge this empirically obvious fact. It's almost as if you are saying "Who you gonna believe, me and my fringy citations, or your lying eyes?"

I think the approach you have taken is quite reductionistic. Many experts who advocate for suppression have tunnel vision, and are focused only on covid. Furthermore, the experts who preach the gospel of "social distancing" and "stay at home" generally are not in a position where the measures will have serious impacts on their personal lives, otherwise they would find a different solution. The fact that Neil Ferguson, whose modelling is the basis of the British lockdown, had someone over to his place in violation of lockdown says all I need to know about the entiled priviledge of these experts. There are other things that are happening in the world besides that, and many people have more pressing things to worry about. Everyone agreed that the covid restrictions were going to tank the economy, and we know that bad economies kill people. I can't imagine that even the worst unmitigated spread of the virus would have had as nearly bad impacts for such a long term as what we are seeing with the economy.

How anyone on the left can advocate for economic destruction knowing that it will hurt people at the bottom end, or strict social distancing measures knowing that once the police are brought in to enforce them that the police will target vulnerable people the left claims to care about, is mind-boggling.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 

You  mean how New Zealand was so successful stopping covid that it had to go into a second lockdown, which resulted in lockdown protests?

You keep saying this. What does the existence of  a protest prove? Is the protester always right?

bekayne wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 

You  mean how New Zealand was so successful stopping covid that it had to go into a second lockdown, which resulted in lockdown protests?

You keep saying this. What does the existence of  a protest prove? Is the protester always right?

Protesters aren't always right, but when it comes to public health measures, public buy-in is important. If a public health measure generates resentment among certain segments of the population, that undermines confidence in public health guidance. We've seen from lockdown protests in Europe and the UK that there is some resentment and frustration with being told where not to go. If people stop listening, and that frustration boils over into social unrest (which is becoming an actual threat as the lockdowns are pushing people into desparation and poverty) that is not good for society in the long run.